In the early 1970’s… the stone house was isolated enough that Abbey could stand outside and urinate in peace – as his friend Dick Felger once observed him doing from the roof of the house, after Abbey called out to him when he was driving by. This was Abbey’s privacy test; when outdoors urination was no longer feasible, it was time to move on. He told Sandy Newmark that “if you can’t pee in your own front yard, you live too close to the city.” –from James M. Cahalan’s Edward Abbey: A Life